William Morse wrote:

> "Anon."  wrote in
> news:c4eskb$2adq$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org: 
> 
> 
>>William Morse wrote:
> 
> 
>  (snip)
> 
> 
>>>With regard to kin selection, a weakness of Hamilton's rule is in
>>>getting an altruism gene established in the first place. If the gene
>>>isn't at least locally widespread, the r factor will in fact be low. 
>>>For the flip side - the inability for a selfish gene to spread - the
>>>reverse is true, since the more a selfish gene spreads, the greater
>>>the selection pressure will be against it. 
> 
>   
> 
>>This is true for the first generation, after that it depends on either
>>the ability to recognise kin, or aggregation of kin.
> 
> 
> To clarify - are you referring to kin selection, anti-selfishness 
> selection, or both?
> 
Both - the problem is simply that the gene has to help other copies of 
itself, which menas there have to be multiple copies.

("...the gene has to help..." is short-hand for "...the organism 
carrying the gene..." of course)
>  
> 
>>Of course, for behaviour like parental care, the problems are reduced.
> 
> 
> The above is the statement that made me think you are referring to kin 
> selection.
> 
I was using it as it's the clearest example where the "start-up cost" is 
lowered.

Bob

-- 
Bob O'Hara
Department of Mathematics and Statistics
P.O. Box 4 (Yliopistonkatu 5)
FIN-00014 University of Helsinki
Finland
Telephone: +358-9-191 23743
Mobile: +358 50 599 0540
Fax:  +358-9-191 22 779
WWW:  http://www.RNI.Helsinki.FI/~boh/

Journal of Negative Results - EEB: www.jnr-eeb.org
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